Dyson at long last unveils '360 Eye,' a cyclonic robot vacuum cleaner

Since 2006, people on a certain secret team at Dyson vacuums have had to deflect, dissemble or otherwise change the subject when an obvious question came up:

When is Dyson going to release its own robot vacuum to answer iRobot’s Roomba and other competitors?

“It’s always been a bit frustrating when people have asked,” said Rob Green, a senior design engineer at Dyson. “You had to say ‘no comment,’ or try to avoid the question.”

No more. In Japan on Thursday, Dyson was set to unveil the Dyson 360 Eye, which came to the relief of Dyson engineers and, the company hopes, to the delight of robot lovers with smart phones, WiFi, and dusty homes. The five-pound crawler is the size of a birthday cake, navigates with a 360-degree digital camera that spots the outlines of furniture, and runs for up to half an hour before re-docking to charge its battery.

Competitors noticed.

"Many things are best left to a robot, and vacuum cleaning is one of them," said Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, which makes Roomba robot vacuums.

With the 360 Eye, Dyson — a U.K.-based vacuum innovator with North American headquarters in Chicago — rides into the gadget-dominated robot vacuum market. The autonomous housekeeper crawls on tank-tread tires, and it’s built around a compact, battery-powered vacuum that Dyson says is as powerful as its popular handheld devices.

"It's the first robot vacuum capable of high-performance cleaning," founder James Dyson said in a video released Thursday. "It can see where it's been and it can see where it's going, so it can navigate properly. We're bringing together all this technology that makes an intelligent robot that cleans your home properly."

James Dyson explains how his engineers have developed a robotic vacuum

The new Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner - an intelligent robot capable of cleaning properly. The problems with existing robots are that they have very poor suction and don't navigate properly, so they don't make very good vacuum cleaners.

The new Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner - an intelligent robot capable of cleaning properly. The problems with existing robots are that they have very poor suction and don't navigate properly, so they don't make very good vacuum cleaners.

The company says it will be beta-released in Japan in August of 2015, and then arrive in the U.S. later in the year — if at all, depending on how well it does in Asia.

Until Thursday’s announcement, the 360 Eye’s prototype was hidden, even from Dyson employees, under a black sheet in a display room in Chicago. And Dyson still is keeping the device’s price point under wraps, though its top-of-the-line competitor, the iRobot Roomba 880, retails for $699.99.

Dyson has reasons to be cautious.

In 2001, the company released an earlier robotic vacuum cleaner, the bulky DC06, which bogged down under weight issues, heavy expectations, a hefty $6,000 price tag and which was, eventually, pulled from the market.

Building a better robot is tedious work.

“The thing I’ve learned from this project is that it’s such a balancing act to get it all done,” said Green, who worked on the motor inside the 360 Eye.

New prototype at Dyson

James Janega/ Blue Sky/ Aug. 26, 2014

A prototype is covered with a black sheet in Dyson's North American headquarters in Chicago. Employees are not yet allowed to see the product, a Dyson spokeswoman said.

A prototype is covered with a black sheet in Dyson's North American headquarters in Chicago. Employees are not yet allowed to see the product, a Dyson spokeswoman said. (James Janega/ Blue Sky/ Aug. 26, 2014)

Dyson says the 360 Eye benefits from a brush bar used in upright Dyson vacuums, as well as shared technology from an air-nozzle-powered dust canister and refinements to the digital motor.

Engineers had to overcome the weight of batteries and robust self-driving mechanical treads. Green said the solution involved creating a more efficient digital motor that is light on weight and heavy on patents. Software engineers tied control of the device to a smart-phone app that allows for programmed cleaning, remote control — even offsite — which will provide Dyson with analytics on the robot and how customers use it.

The company said 200 people spent part of 16 years and nearly $47 million in research and development to create what is now the 360 Eye. Green and others were part of a further $250 million project to develop the electromagnetic Dyson Digital Motor used in battery-powered Dyson devices.

“For us, a robotic vacuum has to do it as well as you do it,” Green said. “Our aim was not to release a robot until we could satisfy our need for equivalent pickup performance to a full-size vacuum, and a navigation system that got around the room as well as a human would do it. It was a great learning curve for us.”

At iRobot, which says it already has 12 million of its robots on the market, Angle welcomed the Dyson newcomer, calling it "another step towards realizing our vision of traditional vacuums becoming a thing of the past."

"We’ve long anticipated that our success would inspire others to do the same," Angle said. "Good competition will help grow the industry as a whole."